Group Homes – Our Take

You may be seeing the term “group homes” in the news this week. The topic is being discussed due to a budget shortfall to fund group home placements for children in the foster care system in Arizona.

While the executive and legislative branches haggle over process, timing, and dollars, what Children’s Action Alliance would like for them and the public to understand is that the focus should instead be on the children and the policy decisions that will best support them.

This very week, numerous children undoubtedly had something traumatic happen in their lives that caused them to be separated from their families and brought into the custody of the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS).  We owe them our very best temporary solutions to keep them safe from harm until they can be safely reunited with family, whether one or both parents or a kinship caregiver. If these are not options, a safe foster care family is the next best option. For most children, group homes should be the last and rare placement. The data tells us that group home placements, also known as congregate care, do not have the best outcomes for children.

What we really need a hearing on is Arizona’s plan to significantly reduce the number of children who are placed in group homes.

In 2018, the Family First Prevention Services Act was passed with bipartisan congressional support and signed by President Trump. One of the key pillars of the bill was providing prevention services to safely keep families together. Another key pillar was to push states to do better for children by reducing group home placements. Through this legislation, Congress put their money where their mouth is by specifically putting in place a policy that discourages the use of congregate or group care for children and placing a new emphasis on the child’s family and family foster homes. With limited exceptions, the federal government created a policy that will no longer reimburse states for children placed in group care settings for more than two weeks.

Part of the reason DCS has a budget shortfall is that they have not made the transformational changes that other states have made to move away from group home placements. It is time for this meaningful change to happen. Our children deserve better.

Legislators have proposed three bills that CAA is supporting that can make a difference. No one piece of legislation is a silver bullet solution, but we will keep seeking progress.  We encourage you to weigh in through the Request to Speak system or by contacting legislators to share the urgent need for these bills to create change that will better service children.

• SB1305:  Temporary assistance; child-only case for related kinship caregivers (Sen Shope) Being heard in the House Health and Human Services Committee on Monday, March 24 – Help children stay safely out of the foster care system by supporting grandparents and other relatives to be able to afford to care for them when their parents cannot.
• SB1333:  Congregate care; dependent children; placement (Sen. Shamp: Carroll, Dunn, et al) Being heard in the House Health and Human Services Committee on Monday, March 24 – Help build accountability for DCS to reduce reliance on group home placement for children.
• SB1246: Child neglect; exception; financial resources (Sen. Farnsworth) Awaiting Third Read in the House. Prevent the separation of children and families solely due to poverty or lack of financial resources.

Learn more about this issue:

• Hear from a Fostering Advocates Arizona youth leader on the serious challenges of his group home placement experiences
• Understand the poorer outcomes that occur for children placed in group homes
• Learn about the challenges for children in foster care that need to be addressed, including group home placements, in our 2024 Kids Count Data book in the Children and Foster Care System section